Defining Moments that Slipped Past our Eyes
by patriciathestripper
Summary: Filling in the gaps of character development between season 1 and 2. Some slightly graphic descriptions of violence. Disclaimer: I own nothing but the laptop this was written on


**George**

Their days had become a wonderful, comforting monotony.

Mitchell smokes, Annie makes tea, George cooks, Nina, to everyone's surprise, takes up knitting. There are moments, George swears, when he thinks they are living in one of those incidental musicals. Stomp, or Stamp, or something. Around 7, their hobbies and tasks and meaningless rituals synchronise. The clicking of Nina's (slightly too fast, too anxious) needles, Annie's kettle, the crinkle of tobacco and paper being forced into a thinner and denser rod, and George. He hums when he cooks, hums along to their house, their home song. It's not quite what life was like before, but it's good enough.

He has become complacent. Their music has lulled him, and he has missed something. At some point, their little warm duvet of home was breached. Later, he can't pinpoint when, but he knows roughly. It was between Nina getting up of the bathroom floor (she cried for nine hours) and demanding a hairdresser to cut her hair, to give her the sensible, unromantic hair of someone who can handle such things. Something was lost. He feels its lack of presence. It's like Annie, the first time he met her. It's mocking him, this little gap. This space where Nina's fingers, tugging at his shirt buttons, used to be. When she looks at him, it is a sideways glance.

The powers that be, those rat-bastards that did this to him, have comeback to collect. He had thought they might leave him be, having already taken everything. But then he was stupid enough to try and make something worth taking.

He misses her (long hair and cheeky smiles) so much his teeth ache from gritting them. His disappointment turns to frustration, to irritation and finally venom, which he spits at her when she evades his grasp. He feels so helpless. Feeling helpless makes him feel weak and he so desperately wants to be strong. To be the man he had vowed to be, before he let the wolf swoop in and clean up his mess. Just as he neglected her withdrawal, he misses his own fault line. He has begun to chase a high.

Mitchell watches them from his arm chair, fingers working his cigarette back and forth, and he thinks that no good can come from this.

**Annie**

It doesn't take a genius to realise that Annie was never the life of any party. It's no coincidence that she died in comfy clothes, clothes that are too complacent to be worn with dignity outside the house. If she were to turn on the radio, to something hip and fresh, she wouldn't know a single song they played. Mitchell says it's because modern music is crap, but she knows better. Still, she is improving. Her quality of life as a ghost is so much better than as a human, because even though she's dead, she's suddenly using all the life she never did before. It goes beyond life, to liveliness. But it's closer to the root of the word than the common usage (she studied English language at university, once she got over the heartbreak of not getting into Oxbridge).

In the house, she feels like an unhatched chicken. Warm, and protected by a shell. It's a thin shell, but it's there, undeniable, stopping her spilling out into the ether. So when George mauls Herrick into a pile of ash, it feels like starting new. Like quickening in her egg, without a hungry fox watching. She wants to grow into something remarkable. Someone who owns jewellery and scarves instead of 8 different kinds of ugg boots. Instead of watching Love Actually, She will become the kind of person who has that kind of love in her life. She is determined, her mind made up. If only she could stop making tea, and dozing in her chair, and watching movies with Nina and George while they don't talk to each other. Her egg is so comfy, you see. She can't bring herself to leave its warmth. Her punishment is more of the same. It seems fair, but then, it would, to her. She tries hard not to think about Owen. About how safe and cosseted by his love she felt. About how maybe, she had traded one shell, one easy prison, for another.

**Mitchell**

He used to spend his nights literally clawing his walls. It sounds like a cliché, but he's fairly certain he's the first non-mental to do it. He would enter his room, lock his door and let his guard down. Sometimes he would collapse to the floor, shaking, as though he had been punched in the stomach, the second he relaxed. Then, once he recovered, he would slowly, methodically, take down his King Kong poster (still the first, best and only movie to truly blow his mind) and wait. Soon the hunger pangs would hit, like a knife in his liver. His nostrils would be filled with old, dead scents his memory conjured. Blood, tears, sex, dirt, sweat. One after the other, like a five course meal, or Alice's drink me potion which had made her so tall. His hunger makes him tiny and filthy, like a flea, a pubic louse. His mind begins to bring up images, in case the perfume of murder wouldn't be sufficient temptation. He sees a beautiful girl, only 20. Even before he had consumed her, she had been as pale as snow. Her hair was black. She was like snow white, but her eyes were brown and already had the slightest hint of fear in their gaze. He sees one lovely, innocent drop of blood draw a damning line down her, sliding off the slight, delicate curve of her left breast to mingle with the pool of his guilt that swamps her ruined sheets. It was at this exact moment, when the droplet returns to its brothers outside their owner's desecrated body, that Mitchell would claw the wall. Over and over, until his fingers bled. Because it was better him than _her_.

And now.

Now Mitchell is so bored. He no longer feels the pull at all. He can't even summon her beautiful, empty face, its sweetheart chin tapering into an abused, mutilated neck. Not with any accuracy. When he tries, her eyes change colour, her cheekbones shift. Without the bloodlust, his mind has no use for her, and so it erodes her memory. He has grown used to feeling weak and tired, but not used to his new, clean mind. He is so bored, he has to switch to roll-ups because he smokes so much, and it is an expensive habit. He is so bored; he can't even finish a decent wank before self loathing descends. He is so bored, he begins to claw again. Just for the hell of it.


End file.
